In the next three years, the gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $100 billion. Through in-game purchases, games are successfully monetized without the need to sell advertising. But can “freemium” pricing be used for social impact?
Playmob is a UK-based startup that does just that. The company links charitable organizations to game developers and offers a platform for them to build products to sell within their games. A percentage of these products’ profits goes to the dedicated charity. Connecting charities like the World Wildlife Fund and Heifer International to developers like EA Games and Rovio, Playmob has successfully raised over $750k in 34 global campaigns.
We chatted with member Jude Ower, founder and CEO of Playmob who was recently named Wired’s “One to Watch in 2015.”
How did you get involved in gaming?
I have always been fascinated with games. I grew up playing on a Spectrum and a Commodore 64, and I would make my own handmade puzzles. As a child I was always problem-solving and doing creative things. I was a creative geek from a young age—I still am!
I studied marketing at Abertay University, where I met the founders of many games startups. I did my dissertation on a gaming startup that was building games for education and training. I eventually joined forces with them to do research on their market opportunity. I got really interested in how games could be used for other purposes and decided to move to London to explore setting up my own business. I had the start-up bug, but I wasn’t sure what exactly I would do about it.
After moving to London, I set up a small consultancy in the games for learning space. I did consultancy work in games for learning and worked with big names such as Shell, the Houses of Parliament, the White House and the Singaporean government.
What inspired you to start Playmob?
Because of the nature of my work, many charities approached me asking if I could build games that would teach about their causes while raising funds at the same time. I loved this concept, but it was flawed on the scaling side. Surely there must be a way this idea could be scaled that didn’t involved charities paying for development and keeping the game maintained?
When the Haiti earthquake happened in 2010, Zynga, the creator of Farmville, launched a campaign to raise funds for the victims of the disaster. They managed to raise a whopping $1.5 million in 5 days. In addition to making a huge social impact, the campaign had an overall impact on player engagement, positively impacting the game and business. It was then I thought, if there was an open platform for games to quickly and simply connect to causes, to raise money and awareness while making a positive impact on the game and business too, we could create a proposition and a business that would be a win-win for all.
Did you know anything about philanthropy before you started?
Philanthropy was a big part of my childhood. My dad was a monk (until he married my mum!). He kept me grounded and encouraged me to think about others’ needs, so from a young age, in addition to being brought up with tech and games (which was my mum’s influence), I also had strong social values and an awareness of global issues.
When Zynga launched their campaign, there were a few key things I wanted to improve: 1) seeing where the funds went and what was impacted, and 2) as a gamer/consumer, keeping track of the collective impact I had made myself and within a community. Games have the power to tell a story and this is what I felt lacked in some of the campaigns I had seen. So combining the two, giving and gaming, made perfect sense to me. Could we engage players and raise awareness of causes by telling the cause’s story in a game? Could we create a positive business impact with the players by letting them see where the funds went so that they felt good about their purchases, too?
Were there obstacles in bringing together the worlds of gaming and philanthropy?
One of the biggest obstacles of bringing the two together was grappling with the notion that we are a for-profit business raising money for charitable causes. However, we are very clear that we are a ‘profit with purpose’ business. Gaming studios and publishers pay to use our platform and our services for the heavy lifting we do, with very little needed from the studios to make this happen. And for charities enable more money and awareness, especially from hard to reach audiences. The reach we can gain with our gaming partners is far greater than any reach we believe a charity can currently achieve on its own. Therefore, the more we raise for causes, the more we grow as a business and the more value we add to our gaming partners.
As a gamer yourself, how do you feel about introducing elements of the real world (i.e. charitable causes) to the fantasy world of games?
For me, it’s a no brainer. In games we create, we build and we save. To link real world scenarios and outcomes to our gaming actions not only raises awareness of causes that need our help, but as a community, every small action leads to a great objective. Plus, I can play for longer and not feel so bad about the time I spent playing, because it’s all for a good cause.
Photographs by Lauren Kallen